Industrial action in Sweden - a new pattern?

The paper studies the modern conflict patterns and conflict dimensions in Sweden 1993-2005. The aim is to trace and interpret the new patterns and dimensions of labour market conflict by collecting and compiling strike data from the National Conciliation Office, (1993-99) and the National Mediation Office (2000-2005). On the whole, strike activity has decreased steadily from the 1980s and onwards and in large parts of the Swedish labour market conflicts are very rare. A few small un-ions organising primarily non-manufacturing working class in the domestic sector, account for the majority of the sanctioned conflicts. The new pattern is that the re-maining conflicts in broad terms can be divided in two parts: conflicts over wages and other working conditions and conflicts about the collective bargaining itself. Each with its own logic.Labour market; conflict; strike; secondary strike; blockade; Sweden; collective bargaining; strike patterns

The Social Democratic Party and the Question of Public Ownership 1982-1991

The paper studies the shift in managing the state or public enterprises from a perspective of policy learning during the period 1982-1991 in Sweden. There was a significant reversal in the policy around state enterprises sector from 1982 towards a more market oriented business approach. The aim here is to investigate whether this transformation is a case of policy learning. How and where are policies formulated, and which sources are relevant to detect evidence of a possible learning process? If this shift could be described in terms of learning: When, how and why did the elite among the bureaucrats and politicians learn? The results seem to indicate that there is no specific event or paradigmatic shift that happened during the actual mandatory period 1982-1991. It was rather more of a gradual adaptation on the issue of state enterprises, mostly triggered by earlier experiences as well as the last major economic crisis in the 1970s and early 1980s. The actual learning that took place had its sources mainly from within the party.Social Democratic Party; public ownership; privatization; state enterprises; policy learning; knowledge

The Decentralization of Wage Bargaining: Four Cases

The paper contributes to the discussion about the possible trends and processes towards decentralization of wage bargaining or wage setting within the OECD-countries since the 1970s. Based on a data set of 16 OECD countries from 1950 to 2000 our results show that in terms of bargaining level the trend is clear towards decentralization since the 1970s, even though there are important exceptions. In terms of confederal involvement the major decrease occurs among the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, whereas many of the other countries have had a status quo more or less. In terms of government involvement, however, the change is the almost non-existent. The overall tendency is still towards less centralisation, even though a number of countries have not changed or have moved in the opposite direction. Sweden, Denmark, UK and the Netherlands experience the largest decreases in decentralization overall. The processes of decentralization of wage bargaining look very differently in each country. It may occur through changes in the collective agreements themselves or through individual wage-setting outside the system of collective agreements. And the decentralization process may occur both in a context of cooperation between the labor-market organizations or in a setting of conflicts.Wage bargaining; wage setting; collective agreements; centralization; decentralization; labour market models; OECD

Fire scars, ground vegetation fuels, and prescribed burning : towards better fire management in Fennoscandia

Forest fires are an ambivalent issue in Fennoscandia. Although most long-term fire-history studies show a decrease in burned areas, the recent large fires have set challenges for the future given the increasing demand to develop more effective fire management methods. On the other hand, the low impact of fire has raised concerns regarding how to safeguard fire-induced biodiversity. Related to these subjects, in my thesis I have studied fire scar formation, the flammability of the most common ground layer fuels and the state of prescribed burning in Finland. The main findings of my thesis were: 1. Low-intensity forest fires do not necessarily form fire scars in Scots pine stands. The scars found in the study were more common in younger stands as well as in smaller trees and were also formed in higher parts of tree trunks. The variability in shape, size and occurrence of scars suggest that the scar formation in young pine stands may be a stochastic phenomenon depending on fuel load, topography and weather conditions. 2. Prescribed burnings in Finland have declined during recent decades and their current ecological impact is low, despite scientific evidence and expert work having brought about the recommendation to increase burnings. This is primarily explained by the high costs and arduousness of burnings, which have led to decisions in state forest policies and forest certification modifications that have diminished burnings. Combined with low areas burned in wildfires, the current fire regime in Finland can poorly safeguard the fire-dependent habitats and species. 3. The most common ground vegetation fuels in Finnish forests differ in their moisture variation, ignition probability and mass loss during combustion. Amongst studied species reindeer lichen (Cladonia spp.) was clearly the most flammable with the fastest drying rates and the highest ignition probability, whereas fork moss (Dicranum spp.) was the least flammable, while feather moss (Pleurozium schreberi) and stairstep moss (Hylocomium splendens) were intermediate. Wind velocity clearly increased the ignition probability of the studied moss species, and increased wind speeds reduced the species-specific differences. These major findings of my thesis could be of use in enhancing forest fire prevention and prescribed burnings as well as in interpreting past fire regimes.Vaikka pitkällä aikavälillä vuotuiset metsäpalopinta-alat ovat merkittävästi pienentyneet Fennoskandiassa, ovat viime vuosien useat laajat metsäpalot pakottaneet uudelleenarviomaan niin metsäpalojen merkitystä kuin niiden tuloksellisen torjunnan kehittämisen tarvetta lähitulevaisuudessa. Toisaalta pitempiaikainen palojen väheneminen on herättänyt huolta palovaikutteisen monimuotoisuuden säilymisestä. Väitöskirjassani olen lähestynyt näitä aiheita erityisesti palokorojen muodostumisen, pohjakerroksen kosteusvaihtelun ja syttyvyyden sekä kulotusten kehittämisen kautta, tavoitteenani tuottaa tietoa, jota voitaisiin hyödyntää palohistorian tutkimisessa, metsäpalontorjunnassa sekä metsäluonnon monimuotoisuuden turvaamisessa. Väitöskirjani päätulokset ovat: 1. Palokoroja, eli tulen puille aiheuttamia arpimaisia vaurioita, ei välttämättä muodostu mäntyihin (Pinus sylvestris) matalaintensiteettisissä pintapaloissa. Palokoroja muodostui kuitenkin osaan puista ja myös ylemmäksi runkoihin. Havaitut palokorot olivat yleisempiä nuoremmissa männiköissä ja pienemmissä puissa. Palokorojen koko, muoto ja määrä vaihtelivat huomattavasti, joten niiden esiintyminen pintapaloissa lienee luonteeltaan satunnainen prosessi, johon vaikuttavat palokuorman määrä ja laatu, topografia sekä sääolosuhteet. 2. Huolimatta kulotusten hyödyllisyyttä monimuotoisuudelle tukevasta tutkimus- ja asiantuntijatiedosta, niiden määrä Suomessa on vähentynyt tasaisesti viime vuosikymmeninä ja kulotusten nykyinen ekologinen vaikuttavuus on pieni. Todennäköisesti kulotusten kalleus, työläys ja hankaluus ovat johtaneet useisiin viimeaikaisiin kulotuksia vähentäneisiin päätöksiin. Pienten vuotuisten metsäpalopinta-alojen ja kulotustoiminnan vähenemisen vuoksi paloriippuvaisen lajiston ja luontotyyppien säilyminen Suomessa on epävarmaa. 3. Fennoskandiassa niin metsäpaloissa kuin kulotuksissakin usein merkittävin palava aines ovat pohjakerroksen sammal- ja jäkälälajit, joiden havaittiin eroavan toisistaan sekä syttyvyyden että kosteusvaihtelun osalta. Poronjäkälät (Cladonia spp) olivat nopeimmin kuivuvana ja helpoimmin syttyvänä selkeästi paloherkin pohjakerroksen paloaines. Tutkituista sammalista kynsisammalet (Dicranum spp) olivat vähiten paloherkkiä ja seinäsammal (Pleurozium schreberi) sekä kerrossammal (Hylocomium splendens) melko samankaltaisia, paloherkkyydeltään poronjäkäliä alhaisempia, mutta kynsisammalia korkeampia. Tuulen havaittiin lisäävän syttymisherkkyyttä huomattavasti sekä tasoittavan lajien välisiä syttyvyyseroja

Willingness to Pay and Sensitivity to Time Framing: A Theoretical Analysis and an Application on Car Safety

Stated preference (SP) surveys attempt to obtain monetary values for non-market goods that reflect individuals’ “true” preferences. Numerous empirical studies suggest that monetary values from SP studies are sensitive to survey design and so may not reflect respondents’ true preferences. This study examines the effect of time framing on respondents’ willingness to pay (WTP) for car safety.We explore how WTP per unit risk reduction depends on the time period over which respondents pay and face reduced risk in a theoretical model and by using data from a Swedish contingent valuation survey. We find that WTP is sensitive to time framing; the theoretical model predicts that the effect is likely to be nontrivial, and empirical estimates from an annual scenario are about 70 percent higher than estimates from a monthly scenario.Car safety, Contingent valuation, Time frame, Willingness to pay

Corporate cartels and challenges to European labour market models

We propose that one of the main causes of shortcomings in European labour markets is the existence of corporate cartels, through which the state has delegated various forms of regulatory power to employers and employees that act as cartels. Analysis indicates that these cartel arrangements are not in the interest of labour because they are hard to combine with the demands of a modern and knowledge-based economy. Hence, a modernization of European labour market models is needed

Normalized Projected Red & SWIR (NPRS): A New Vegetation Index for Forest Health Estimation and Its Application on Spruce Bark Beetle Attack Detection

Due to the ongoing global warming, European spruce bark beetles has become a serious threat to the spruce forests in Europe and caused serious environmental and economic issues. This study proposes a new vegetation index, Normalized Projected Red & SWIR (NPRS), for detection of spruce bark beetle attacks. 29 healthy and 24 bark beetle attacked plots in southern Sweden were used for evaluating the classification accuracy using NPRS at early-, intermediate- and late-stage attacks. The obtained kappa coefficients were 0.73, 0.80 and 0.88, respectively. It was concluded that the NPRS is a feasible method for continuous bark beetle mapping over large areas

Analyzing the environmental risk factors of European spruce bark beetle damage at the local scale

The frequent outbreaks of European spruce bark beetle Ips typographus (L.) have destroyed huge amounts of Norway spruce Picea abies (L.) forests in central and Northern Europe. Identifying the risk factors and estimating the damage level is important for strategic damage control. The risk factors of forest damage by spruce bark beetles have mostly been analyzed on the landscape scale, while the in-stand risk factors have been less investigated. This study aims at exploring the local-scale risk factors in a flat area with spruce-dominated forest in southern Sweden. The investigated factors include four abiotic factors, i.e., soil wetness, solar radiation, slope gradient, and aspect, and three biotic factors, i.e., the number of deciduous trees and trees that died from attacks in previous years that remained (TreesLeft) and removed (TreesRemoved) from the forest stand. We put up 24 pheromone bags in six stands attacked by bark beetle in the previous years, resulting in different numbers of infested trees in each plot. We explored in which microenvironment a pheromone bag resulted in more colonization, the impact radius of each factor, and the necessary factors for a risk model. The environmental factors were obtained from remote sensing-based products and images. A generalized linear model (GLM) was used with the environmental factors as the explanatory variables and the damage levels as the response variables, i.e., the number of attacked trees for the plot scale, and healthy/infested for the single-tree scale. Using 50 m and 15 m radius of the environmental factors resulted in the best fit for the model at plot and individual tree scales, respectively. At those radii, the damage risk increased both at plot and individual tree level when spruce were surrounded by more deciduous trees, surrounded by dead trees that had been removed from the forest, and spruces located at the north and east slopes (315 degrees-135 degrees of aspect, > 2 degrees slope). Soil wetness, solar radiation, and remaining standing dead trees in the surrounding did not significantly impact the damage level in the microenvironment of the study area. The GLM risk model yielded an overall accuracy of 0.69 in predicting individual trees being infested or healthy. Our efforts to investigate the risk factors provide a context for wall-to-wall mapping in-stand infestation risks, using remote sensing-based data

Early detection of forest stress from European spruce bark beetle attack, and a new vegetation index: Normalized distance red & SWIR (NDRS)

The European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus [L.]) is one of the most damaging pest insects of European spruce forests. A crucial measure in pest control is the removal of infested trees before the beetles leave the bark, which generally happens before the end of June. However, stressed tree crowns do not show any significant color changes in the visible spectrum at this early-stage of infestation, making early detection difficult. In order to detect the related forest stress at an early stage, we investigated the differences in radar and spectral signals of healthy and stressed trees. How the characteristics of stressed trees changed over time was analyzed for the whole vegetation season, which covered the period before attacks (April), early-stage infestation ('green-attacks', May to July), and middle to late-stage infestation (August to October). The results show that spectral differences already existed at the beginning of the vegetation season, before the attacks. The spectral separability between the healthy and infested samples did not change significantly during the 'green-attack' stage. The results indicate that the trees were stressed before the attacks and had spectral signatures that differed from healthy ones. These stress-induced spectral changes could be more efficient indicators of early infestations than the 'green-attack' symptoms.In this study we used Sentinel-1 and 2 images of a test site in southern Sweden from April to October in 2018 and 2019. The red and SWIR bands from Sentinel-2 showed the highest separability of healthy and stressed samples. The backscatter from Sentinel-1 and additional bands from Sentinel-2 contributed only slightly in the Random Forest classification models. We therefore propose the Normalized Distance Red & SWIR (NDRS) index as a new index based on our observations and the linear relationship between the red and SWIR bands. This index identified stressed forest with accuracies from 0.80 to 0.88 before the attacks, from 0.80 to 0.82 in the early-stage infestation, and from 0.81 to 0.91 in middle- and late-stage infestations. These accuracies are higher than those attained by established vegetation indices aimed at 'green-attack' detection, such as the Normalized Difference Water Index, Ratio Drought Index, and Disease Stress Water Index. By using the proposed method, we highlight the potential of using NDRS with Sentinel-2 images to estimate forest vulnerability to European spruce bark beetle attacks early in the vegetation season